by Robert P. Arnoldt
When France fell to the German blitzkrieg in June 1940, the world looked for the Wehrmacht to complete its conquest of Western Europe by invading and subduing Great Britain. The long-touted invasion, however, never took place. The threat gradually passed from the probable to the possible, and then to just a threat. Hitler’s attention had turned partially away from Britain and its stubborn resistance, and had refocused on the vast expanses of Soviet Russia.
England, with the Royal Navy and her unique location protecting her from the Wehrmacht, became a forward outpost for the survivors of Hitler’s European victory, and a base for Allied strategy to harass and eventually re-conquer Europe.
But, after the debacle at Dunkirk, the British had precious little in the way of equipment or battle-worthy ground units to press the Germans and dislodge them from their hold on the Continent. Immediately after Dunkirk, on 8 June 1940 (twenty-six months before Dieppe), the British “home” forces amounted to one armored division and fifteen infantry divisions. Of these formations, two had done no divisional training, five had done very little training, and the remaining nine had reached a “fair” standard of training. The average strength of the divisions in question was eleven thousand men, or just over half of their operational table of organization.
If it had not been for the skill and courage of the RAF, the blind stubbornness of Göring, and the lack of foresight displayed by Hitler, there would have been no such forward outpost for initial raids.
As the threat of invasion lessened, the Allies looked for ways to strike back at the Germans, while strength for the return to the Continent was built around the survivors of Dunkirk.
Part of the initial strategy adopted centered on the Allied intent to conduct both small- and large-scale raids on German-occupied territories during the interim between the fall of France and the opening of a second front. These operations were managed by the Combined Operations Group, assembled from volunteers drawn from the United Kingdom, most of the conquered European nations and the United States. The raids were directed against various targets on the long coast from Norway through southern France.
The port of Dieppe was eventually chosen for one of these raid sites because it offered a variety of objectives: a radar station (to be studied and then destroyed); a large number of landing craft (to be captured or sunk); a good opportunity to render the port of Dieppe itself useless; and opportunities to destroy local industries that were being used by the German occupation troops. But, most importantly, the raid would provide the Allied General Staffs with very important and, indeed essential information concerning German defenses in the West.[1]
While other raid sites offered opportunities for destruction of specific facilities (such as the attacks on St. Nazaire or Bruneval), or interdiction of traffic or communication (such as Spitzbergen or Maaloy Island), Dieppe was chosen for different considerations such as stated above. But perhaps the most important reason for choosing the port of Dieppe was that, apart from the disastrous landing at Gallipoli in 1915, the Allies had very little experience in amphibious landings under fire and techniques involved in landing large bodies of men on enemy-occupied shores. If many thousands of men and arms were to be landed when the second front was launched the following year or the year after, experience must be gained the hard way by mounting commando-type raids. Another factor was the very unsettled weather in the English Channel, which is notorious for its sudden gales and storms. A major amphibious landing on the open beaches was considered impossible, due to the difficulties of landing an army in the short space of time before the occupying forces had had time to recover and gather strength sufficient to throw the invaders back into the sea. Logistics operations at that time demanded that a major seaport be captured intact to enable large ships to be unloaded quickly of men and arms, using dockside cranes and transportation equipment.[2]
This “major seaport” thesis was discarded by the Allied High Command after Dieppe, and proved to be a wise move that led to the open-beach landing so successfully carried off on 6 June 1944. The D-Day landings were supported by multiple section Mulberry floating piers towed from England and placed to provide a way for supplies, personnel, and armor to be brought into the beachheads without the need for an established port with dockside equipment, etc.
The original Dieppe operation, codenamed Rutter, was scheduled for execution on 21 June, and again on 8 July 1942, but was scrubbed due to weather and tide conditions.
The original plan was a very ambitious undertaking that called for flanking attacks to be mounted at either side of the town and harbor. A frontal attack was to be avoided at all costs, mainly because of the topography of the area, where the town and main beach are dominated by headlands to either side on the east and west. A battalion of Royal Marines, backed by a battalion of the new Churchill tanks, would land at Quiberville, some 7 miles to the west of the town of Dieppe. Once ashore, they would attempt to overrun the western headlands dominating the town, which had been armed with powerful gun batteries that dominated the main beach. At the same time, two battalions of troops would land at the village of Pourville, nearer to the town of Dieppe, but also to its west. Another two battalions would land to the east of Dieppe at the small village of Puys. Their task would be to quickly overcome the German gun batteries on the eastern headland dominating the main beach and then advance through the rear of the town of Dieppe toward the main beach. The troops at Pourville would adopt a similar maneuver and make for the main beach of Dieppe, after destroying the radar station and rear defenses. They would be assisted by the tanks at Quiberville.
After destroying all military installations and objectives, they would be re-embarked from the main beach under the protection of the air force. The objectives were to:
Destroy the airfield at Saint Aubin, Dieppe.
Destroy the radar station, power station, port and rail installations and ammunition and oil dumps.
Capture or destroy massed landing craft.
Capture documents from a German headquarters that was believed to be at Arques la Bataille.
Take prisoners for questioning.
Destroy a torpedo dump under the east headland.
The Dieppe assault force was assembled, and two preliminary training exercises were held. The first was very bad; the second, a considerable improvement; and approval to proceed with the operation was given. On 4 July, all forces embarked and the troops were told they were going to land at Dieppe. A chance German air raid put two of the large infantry landing ships out of action, and on 7 July, the raid was cancelled.[3]
On 17 August, it was reactivated. The same force was reassembled and sailed the next night.[4] The assault armada comprised 237 vessels and craft. The expedition was to sail in thirteen groups at varying speeds from four principal ports in the United Kingdom: Southampton, Portsmouth, Newhaven, and Shoreham. At a selected position out in the channel, all of the ships and landing craft would meet and form up into one convoy. Fifteen minesweepers would lead the way, sweeping a clear channel through an extensive enemy mine field and marking a safe path with dan buoys.
At a point 10 miles from Dieppe, the infantry landing ships would stop to disembark the troops into smaller assault craft. After forming up, each group would be led in to their respective beaches by motor gunboats or motor launches. Eight Hunt class destroyers of a displacement of 1,000 tons and armed with 4-inch guns would supply the sole bombardment for the invasion, and targets ashore would be signaled to each destroyer by special forward observation teams provided with radio transmitters and receivers.[5]
Air support was provided, in the final tally, by a total of sixty-nine Allied squadrons, with a day’s total of 2,617 sorties. Allied losses amounted to 106 aircraft shot down, including eighty-eight fighters, eight bombers and ten reconnaissance aircraft. Local air superiority had been achieved by the invaders, but at a cost of 153 killed and wounded. It was the RAF’s worst single day’s losses during the entire course of World War II.[6]
Command and control plans were much too rigid and prone to break down, and confusion reigned from the start. The operation’s commander, Canadian Major General John Hamilton (Ham) Roberts, was truly without the information he so desperately needed to direct his forces ashore.
Communications from the ground units to Roberts on the command ship Calpe ranged from inadequate to nonexistent, compounded by enemy deception and the chaos on the beaches. Most of the beach master’s and forward observation team’s radio equipment was destroyed on landing as were at least fifty percent of the tanks’ radios.
RAF communications for the air battle were good between the aircraft, the command ship, and the control point in England. But not knowing how his ground forces were fairing, Roberts could not use his air support to its greatest effect.[7]
When Operation Rutter was reactivated on 17 July 1942, its code-name was changed to Jubilee and its format was altered radically to allow the main thrust to be made on the main beach in a frontal assault against the massed guns of the enemy. The tanks would also be landed on the main beach. The beach slope and the size and composition of the large “pebbles,” which made up the surface of the beach, made it totally unsuited to tank tracks and would cause many of the tanks to break or throw their tracks as they advanced out of the landing craft. This situation and the fact that a high seawall provided a virtually impassable barrier into the town from the beaches were problem points given insufficient attention by the planners. The engineers had been ordered to blow the seawall and the tank barriers, which were made of reinforced concrete, 8 feet high, and filled with firesteps for German infantry; but the murderous fire on the beach would cut down the unprotected engineers before most had reached the seawall or the tank obstacles. No alternate plans had been provided to eliminate the tank barriers.
The plan to land troops on either flank, at Puys to the east and Pourville to the west of Dieppe, remained unchanged. The heavy gun batteries on the headlands overlooking the main beach represented a major threat to any proposed landing and would have to be put out of action prior to the assault on the main beaches.
The Royal Regiment of Canada, aided by the Black Watch, was given the task of landing on the narrow Blue Beach at Puys. A flight of stone steps provided a seemingly easy climb to the cliff top, where they had been ordered to destroy the heavy gun batteries on the east headland before they could fire on the troops scheduled to land on the main beach a mere thirty minutes later. After destroying the heavy guns, the Royals and Black Watch were ordered to advance through the suburbs of Dieppe and head toward the main beach to meet up with their comrades of the Essex Scottish and Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI) regiments. By this time, those regiments would have landed on the main beach. A perimeter was to be set up around Dieppe to provide defense against German reinforcements.
To the west of Dieppe, the South Saskatchewan Regiment (SSR) was given a similar task. They were to land at Pourville and secure a bridgehead to allow the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders to move through to attack the gun batteries on the west headland, before advancing through the suburbs of Dieppe to the main beach. There, they would also meet up with their comrades of the RHLI and Essex Scottish (and hopefully, the Calgary Tanks) who were scheduled to land at 0520, thirty minutes after the flanking attacks. Assisting the main body of troops would be the Royal Canadian Engineers of the 2nd, 7th and 11th Field Companies, units of the Signal and Provost Corps, Field Ambulance and Medical units, and the Toronto Scottish, who were to save many lives during the day with their invaluable suppressive fires from the landing barges. The Regiment Fusilier de Montreal (Fusilier Mont-Royal) and Royal Marine Commando Group “A” would remain off Dieppe acting as a floating reserve. At the successful completion of the operation, tanks and other equipment not easily re-embarkable onto landing craft were to be destroyed on the main beach. Wounded, dead, and prisoners were to be picked up, along with the rest of the force, by landing craft that had delivered them to their respective beaches of landing.
Strong objections to the suicidal frontal attack were met with the argument that a very heavy preliminary bombardment by heavy bombers of the RAF (the majority of which was cancelled at the last moment, due to considerations raised as to the safety of French civilians living in the town itself) would do much to cripple the enemy defenses and that, furthermore, the plan would undoubtedly succeed because of the element of surprise. The fact that it was planned to land the Royals (Blue Beach) and the SSR (Green Beach) 30 minutes before the main assault seemed to have been overlooked. By the time the Essex Scottish and the RHLI hit the main beaches (Red and White) at Dieppe, the enemy would have been well-alerted by the attacks being launched only 6 miles away from the town of Dieppe, and every man would be standing by his gun or mortar position.[8]
At the time of the Dieppe operation, landing craft such as those used by the Combined Operations Group, had made some progress but were definitely not up to the level of sophistication of the force used in 1944 at Normandy.
At Dieppe, small Assault and Landing Craft Mechanized (LCM) were carried by larger ships and lowered to the water some 10 miles offshore for their run-in. These craft were partially armored and very lightly armed.
The larger Landing Craft, Tank (LCT), were cramped and hard to handle in any but calm waters.
A new type of support landing craft was used for the first time at Dieppe. Called the Beach Protection Craft, Flak, it was a converted LCT armed in one case with two 4-inch guns and in other cases with ten 2-pounder pom-poms. These craft were used for close-in fire support and anti-aircraft protection.[9]
The major actor in the equipment department, however, was not the landing craft, but the tank chosen to equip the Cavalry regiment in their role as an integral part of the main beach landings on Red and White Beaches: the Churchill, or A22 Infantry Tank Mark IV.
The Churchill tank used by the 14th Canadian Army Tank Regiment, or “Calgary Tanks,” at Dieppe, had its good points and bad. The vehicle was ill-matched and under-gunned for its specific role during the operation, and the operation suffered accordingly. Most Churchills that made it ashore were equipped with 2-pounder and 6-pounder cannon in their turrets, and 3-inch howitzers mounted in the nose that had only limited traverse. These were of small value against German strong points and of no use against the German bunkers and cave redoubts overlooking the beach. One Dieppe veteran, a troop leader who commanded three Mark III vehicles, compared the mounting of the 2-pounder in the turret of the Churchill Mark I with “putting a peashooter into the nostril of an elephant.”[10]
Pre-landing troop briefings were, according to surviving Canadian participants, extensive in scope but lacking in detail as to German automatic weapon, field gun, and sniper positions in the headlands on both flanks of the main beach, and anti-tank defenses and the anti-ship obstacles at both high and low tide.[11] It has been suggested that too much reliance was placed on the pre-war tourist information and on aerial photographs taken as little as thirty-six hours prior to the operation. Additionally, German troop and equipment strength was also underestimated, as was the effect (or lack of an effect) of a minimal naval bombardment and severely limited strategic bombing just before the landing.[12]
“Dieppe was not one battle, but eight separate actions which had only limited effect on each other.”[13]
The first action joined was the chance encounter of Flotilla Group 5, carrying No. 3 Commando, with a German coastal convoy bound from Le Harve to Dieppe at 0347. Two messages from British naval headquarters at Portsmouth, warning two hours earlier that the German convoy was in the path of the flotilla, failed to reach Group 5.
The German convoy escort struck first, scattering the British. Only seven of twenty-three landing craft carrying the commandos were able to proceed, with only twenty men landing to attack the battery at Berneval. The commandos in the other six landing craft that reached the French coast were unable to reach their target.
The convoy skirmish, however, had little effect on the action at Berneval. One of the landing craft able to proceed after the convoy battle landed Major Peter Young, two other officers, and seventeen men at Yellow Beach II below Berneval at 0515. Here, the target was the 2/770th Huren-Kusten Artillerie Abteilung which had four 105-mm and three 170-mm coastal defense guns, as well as two 20-mm Oerlikons for anti-tank defense. The battery had 127 men, and there were 114 Luftwaffe personnel manning the radar station in the vicinity.
Major Young’s small force landed undetected and made their way inland to the Dieppe-Berneval road. A young French boy described the best approach to the battery and led them into Berneval. There, Young cut the telephone lines to Dieppe.
The twenty British commandos then moved to within 200 yards of the battery, neutralized it with sniping for more than two hours and re-embarked at 0810. The second landing by six craft, carrying remnants of No. 3 Commando at Berneval on Yellow Beach I was less successful. They were twenty-five minutes late and landed in broad daylight, encountering heavy opposition immediately upon landing. The Germans, who outnumbered the small British force, were soon reinforced by three more companies of the anti-tank battalion of the 302nd Division. Of the 120 commandos who got ashore at Yellow Beach I, eighty-two were captured.
Meanwhile, on the other extreme flank, 5 miles west of Dieppe, No. 4 Commando, under Brigadier Lord S. C. J. P. Lovat, was attacking the heavy German battery, the 813th Abteilung, which had six 150-mm guns just behind the village of Varangeville. While everything else about the Dieppe operation may have tragically failed, this attack was a classic in its success, despite the fact that the battery had opened fire on the invasion fleet at 0447, three minutes before landing.
No. 4 Commando’s attack was made with training-ground precision, and the timing of each individual unit’s move was accurate almost to the second. Lord Lovat landed with B Troop at 0450 east of the River Saane, lost four men to machine guns, went a mile along the banks of the Saane, and turned east to the Blancmenil le Bas wood alongside the battery. Lieutenant A. S. S. Veasey landed A Troop at Quiberville on Orange Beach II, scaled the cliffs with tubular steel ladders, knocked out two pillboxes, and cut communications. Major Derek Mills-Robert, with F Troop reinforced, landed at Vasterival opposed only by one machine gun. The noise of his bangalore torpedoes blowing gaps in the wire along the beach was covered by the roar of the Spitfires attacking the Ailly lighthouse.
Precisely at 0550, the British mortars opened fire. B Troop attacked from the right flank, and Major Mills-Robert and F Troop from the left flank. An air attack by Spitfires was made simultaneously. It was over in a matter of minutes, aided appreciably by a direct mortar shell hit on piled cordite, which blew up, killing or stunning many Germans. But the hard-driving infantry attack by F Troop administered the coup de grace and overran the battery. Four Germans were taken prisoner; the rest were shot or bayoneted. By 0650, the guns were blown up, and the commandos withdrew toward Orange Beach I at Vasterival. By 0900, the unit was on its way back to England. Its casualties totaled forty-six.
On the German side, it was not until 1000 that the 302nd Division headquarters learned that the Varangeville battery had been wiped out.
At Pourville, 2 miles to the west of Dieppe, the South Saskatchewan Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles C. I. Merritt, landed as one wave on Green Beach at 0450, without a shot being fired at it. The plan was to land astride the River Scie, which flows into the sea near the middle of the Pourville beach. Unfortunately, almost all of the landing force was put ashore on the west bank. This meant that A Company, which was charged with seizing the radar station and the high ground a mile to the east, had to penetrate the village and cross the bridge on the main road to Dieppe. Before it could cross the bridge, however, the German defenders were in action. This was a critical development. The seizure of Le Pollet cliff on the west headlands of Dieppe, and the silencing of the four 105-mm guns of B Battery of the 302nd Division artillery, were essential to a successful landing on the main beaches (Red and White) at Dieppe. These two critical steps in the plan were not accomplished.
But even though the SSR was not able to drive eastward and clear the cliff, it did hold Pourville while the Camerons landed and drove inland along the Scie. These two units fared the best of all the Canadian troops in the Dieppe operation. Of the 523 South Saskatchewans landed, 357 were re-embarked, and 268 of the 503 Camerons were taken off. The losses between them still amounted to a staggering sixty-five percent or 686 out of 1,026, with 151 killed, 266 taken prisoner, and 269 wounded.
At Puys, 1,500 yards to the east of Dieppe, the Royal Regiment of Canada, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Catto, made its approach to Blue Beach under murderous fire from fully-alert defenders in unexpected defensive positions. While still well offshore, the landing craft were hit repeatedly and, when those who survived reached the beach, they had no place to go to escape the German guns. A 10-foot seawall, covered with heavy barbed wire (not reported by British intelligence) blocked the head of the beach. On the east cliff, a concrete pillbox was hidden in the front garden of a brick house. The main slit of this pillbox covered the beach and seawall at very short range. A few hundred yards south of Puys, four German howitzers fired 550 rounds at the landing craft during insertion and the withdrawal.
The landing was a complete disaster. Being unable to move inland off the beaches, the Royal Regiment had no chance to accomplish its vital objective of seizing the headlands to the east of Dieppe. Of 554 officers and men who had embarked from England, only sixty-seven returned; 227 were dead on the beach and the rest were prisoners. Only twenty men were able to move inland off the beach. The German defenders lost two dead and nine wounded. At 0835, the German 571st Regiment informed its division headquarters that Puys was firmly in German hands and that the enemy had lost five hundred prisoners and dead.
In Dieppe itself, the headquarters of the 571st, with two battalions defending the port, did not order action stations until 0500, after it had heard of the landings at Pourville. The German 302nd Infantry Division went on the alert a minute later.
The frontal attack on Red and White Beaches was made by the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert R. Labatt on the right (west), landing on White Beach, and the Essex Scottish commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Jasperson on the left (east), landing on Red Beach. Nine tanks of the 14th Tank Regiment (the Calgary Tanks) were to land with the first wave. The tanks arrived late and the infantry was pinned down before it could get through the wire obstacles and over the seawall.
German riflemen showed exceptional skill in picking off the officers, communications men and engineers, thus effectively hampering command and destroying the attackers ability to communicate their plight to the command ship or to coordinate an attack; and eliminating any chance of the attackers being able to clear the beach obstacles. German mortar fire was devastating and inflicted severe casualties on the Canadians.
The landing of the tanks, nevertheless, was remarkably successful. All ten of the LCTs succeeded in getting tanks ashore, and eight of them landed three apiece. Two tanks were drowned driving off the LCTs into 8 feet of water. Twenty-six tanks reached the beach. Of these, fifteen crossed the seawall and reached the promenade. Here, the tanks were stopped. With all of the engineers either pinned down or killed by the withering German fire, there was no way to remove the heavy concrete roadblocks barring all streets into the town.[14]
Other problems plagued the Calgary Tanks as their landing and attempt to move inland continued. These included not only German opposition and radio failure, but also a possible design failure in the tracks of the Churchills and the composition of the beaches designated for the landing. In addition to a moderately steep beach slope (1 in 4), the physical make-up of the main assault landing areas was a combination of large, loosely set pebbles from 3 to 6 inches in diameter interspersed with sand at low tide.[15] None of the Churchills ashore during the fighting were destroyed by German fire, but all of those that gained the beach and pressed inland over the 2-foot seawall eventually lost one or both tracks to the gravel or to German anti-tank defensive measures. This, of course, reduced them to the limited role of pillbox until ammunition ran out.
The infantry on the main beaches of Dieppe had little chance. Resistance was much stiffer than had been expected. The tanks that were able to get into action were unable to neutralize or destroy the German gun positions along the beach or in the flanking headlands. There was no artillery support and the guns of the supporting ships were too small to be effective. The infantry paid. D Company of the RHLI was almost wiped out on landing. Between thirty and forty-five percent of the Essex Scottish were dead or wounded by 0545.
There was some limited penetration of the town by the infantry. The casino was captured and there was street fighting in the area around it. But this slight success only led to a compounding of the catastrophe. At 0610, the command ship, Calpe, received a message. “Essex Scots across the beaches and in the houses.” At 0640, General Roberts decided to land the main body of his floating reserve, and, at 0700, a battalion of Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Menard headed for Dieppe in twenty-six unarmored landing craft. German artillery had this small fleet under direct fire for ten minutes as it approached Red and White Beaches. The force suffered casualties before landing, and, on reaching the beaches, suffered the same fate as the first assault wave.
Major General Roberts was unaware throughout the action of the extent of the disaster, especially on the main beaches at Dieppe, where he committed his reserve. At 0817, an entry in Calpe’s log reads, “Have control of White Beach.” Roberts thereupon instructed the Royal Marine Commandos under Lieutenant Colonel Phillips, the last of the floating reserve, to transfer to armored landing craft and land on White Beach to support the Essex Scottish. When Colonel Phillips in the lead landing craft emerged from the smoke screen and saw the disaster on the beaches, he stood up to signal the landing craft to turn back. Colonel Phillips was killed almost instantly, but he had saved most of his command.
The Allied naval losses were comparatively light. One destroyer, the Berkeley, was lost during the evacuation, hit by German bombs being jettisoned so the aircraft could escape British fighters. Five of the LCTs and twenty-eight lesser craft were sunk. There were 550 casualties among naval personnel with seventy-five killed and 269 missing. Naval gunners brought down twenty-nine bombers and fighters … including five friendlies!
German ground losses totaled 591 casualties, with the principal defending unit, the 302nd Infantry Division, having five officers and 116 men killed, six officers and 195 men wounded, and eleven missing. The Kriegsmarine lost seventy-eight killed or missing and had twenty-seven wounded, while the Luftwaffe had 105 killed or missing and fifty-eight wounded.[16]
The withdrawal from the main beaches was set to begin at 1100. The recovery of the two Commando groups, the South Saskatchewans and the Camerons, was already underway or completed prior to that time.
At 1100, a curtain of smoke was laid between the headlands by Bostons of No. 411 Squadron, RAF. The job was carried out with great difficulty in the face of the heaviest fire from an enemy unsubdued and still vigorous. The Hamiltons moved back to the sea shore from the casino under the leadership of Captain J. M. Currie and Major H. F. Lazier. Detachments of the RHLI and of the Fusiliers Mont-Royal held the casino until the last, providing covering fire for their comrades. While the re-embarkation was in progress, the crews of the Churchills were methodically destroying their vehicles.
By 1220, most of the men who had fought their way back to the main beaches had been taken away by the crews of the landing craft, who, says the official report, “showed complete disregard of danger in their efforts to take off the troops.”
Throughout the day, and especially during the period of re-embarkation, the work of the medical officers and orderlies with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps was of the highest order. The number of wounded was high, medical supplies ran short on the beach, and large dressings were much in demand. Most of the medical personnel were killed or captured in the course of their duties.
At approximately 1250, the naval force commander, Captain J. Hughes-Hallett, decided to make one further effort to take more men off. “Now Dieppe is shrouded in a pall of smoke, fog and haze,” says the log of Lieutenant R. H. M. Boyle, Royal Navy Reserve, who was serving on the Calpe. “Even in the bit of land you could see, there are things smoking everywhere. We hope to go in again and fetch more men off still there … [We] receive terrific fire from the beach, but we fire back with our forward guns.”
By then (1250), any further evacuation was impossible. The Calpe had closed to within 9 cables (approximately 1 mile) of the beach, when she came under machine gun fire from the German posts on the Dieppe breakwater. No sign of troops or landing craft, save derelicts, could be seen, and the Calpe returned to the cover of the smoke. Captain Hughes-Hallett was engaged in signaling to the Locust, which, being of more shallow draft might possibly have been able to approach nearer the beach, when General Roberts, the military force commander, received a last signal from shore at 1308. It came from Brigadier William Southam’s (brigade commander for the South Saskatchewans, Fusiliers Mont-Royal, and the Camerons) headquarters, saying he was compelled to surrender.[17]
The return to England was mostly uneventful, thanks to the RAF, for the cover maintained was still intense. Despite weather which had become overcast, the air battle went on with hardly-diminished fury.
The expedition’s surviving ships returned to the ports from which they sailed, some of the vessels not berthing until past midnight. The cost in lives on the Allied side was high. Of the five thousand Canadian troops involved in the operation, 3,372 were either killed, wounded or missing (captured). This included 593 officers and other ranks killed or died of wounds, 2,188 captured, and 591 wounded who were brought back to England.[18]
Analysis and Conclusions
Let us first examine the effects that the Dieppe operation had on the Germans.
Colonel-General Kurt Zeitzer, the Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Commander-West (which included Dieppe and the entire Atlantic Wall), called the operation an invasion attempt, and gloated over how easy it had been to stop this supposed invasion on the beaches at and near Dieppe.[19] Hitler liked to hear this kind of news, and apparently believed Zeitzer, and some others, who did not really know what the facts were. One result of this false optimism on the part of Hitler was the decision to put great emphasis on the use of fixed fortifications along the Atlantic coast and the downplaying of the importance of a mobile reserve,[20] even though the official German after action report stated the importance of the mobile reserve used by the 302nd Infantry Division during the Dieppe operation.[21]
On the positive side for the Germans, it was recognized by General Erwin Rommel, who assumed command of the Atlantic coast defenses in November 1943, that beach obstacles and better camouflage against aerial reconnaissance were to be given top priority by German troops from Denmark to the Mediterranean French coast. Copies of photographs found on dead Canadians brought this point home to Rommel and von Rundstedt.[22] The importance of beach obstacles was made very evident by the success experienced by the majority of the landing craft in getting ashore, using smoke as a cover, and inserting the Canadian troops and tanks.[23] The landing craft themselves, many of which were examined after capture by the Germans, proved most valuable for the future design and placement of obstacles along the Atlantic coast during the remaining 22 months before D-Day.[24]
Another improvement made by Rommel was the inclusion of separate coastal artillery batteries, such as those at Varangeville and Berneval, within an extended defensive perimeter around fortified ports like Dieppe. This action was taken to eliminate, as much as possible, commando operations aimed at silencing key coastal batteries prior to, or during, Dieppe-like assaults.[25] No one in the German general staff, not even Rommel, suspected there would be no more attempts on fortified ports.
In a more tactical vein, the fact that no German anti-tank gun was able to penetrate the armor of any Churchill tank during the entire engagement, and that no tank crewman was killed or wounded while inside a tank,[26] was not overlooked by the British, who stressed better, more carefully distributed armor on later Churchill marks. The Germans, however, did not even make mention of these facts in their after action report, dated 25 August 1942.[27] This official oversight on the part of the Germans was only one of the many miscalculations and omissions relating to the Dieppe operation, and one must only wonder at how something so obvious could have been overlooked.
The Soviets, their backs to the wall from Leningrad to the Caspian Sea, benefited indirectly from the Canadians sacrifice, in that German troop strength in the west was increased from thirty-five infantry and panzer divisions immediately after Dieppe to fifty-two infantry and panzer divisions as of November 1942. The difference was made up mostly of German units moved from the Eastern front to the west to bolster the defenses along the Atlantic Wall.[28]
On the Allied side, there is no question but that valuable information was secured that could not have been obtained without fighting.
Most of the payoff for Dieppe was not collected until 6 June 1944, on the Normandy beaches. How many lives may have been saved in Normandy will become apparent as we see what was learned. Lord Louis Mountbatten said that for every soldier who died at Dieppe, ten were saved on D-Day.[29]
The lessons learned included the following:
It was unwise to launch a direct assault on a port. The resistance was too difficult to overcome without destroying all the port facilities, which were needed intact. Further, the direct attack on a port made the plan of battle too rigid and prevented that flexibility essential to overcoming unexpected obstacles, such as clearing the headlands at Dieppe. The Dieppe experience indicated the necessity of achieving a deep penetration quickly with the objective of seizing a port from inland. This was well executed in Normandy nearly two years later when the Allies landed on open beaches, much to the surprise of the Germans, cut the peninsula, and took the port of Cherbourg from the rear.
The disaster on the beaches made it apparent that overwhelming fire support was an absolute necessity, with close fire support in the initial stages of the landing.
At Dieppe, the force commander was literally a spectator with the battle beyond his control. Compounding the difficulties already created by faulty intelligence, General Roberts was inadequately informed about the situation on the beaches, as communications failed or he received false information. As a result, he sent his reserves (Fusiliers Mont-Royal and the Royal Marine Commandos) into action when they could do nothing to affect the course of the battle. Roberts did not have exclusive control over all forces employed, and perhaps even more serious, he was given a plan to implement over which he had no influence. He should have been asked to participate in the advance planning. All of these errors were corrected before General Eisenhower sent his forces ashore on D-Day.
Tactical lessons that emerged from Dieppe that were invaluable in the planning and execution of operations at Normandy included:
The failure of communications was one of the most damaging. The leaders on the command ship Calpe could not successfully direct a battle when they had no information on its progress.
The need for armored landing craft emerged even more clearly after the appalling losses suffered by Les Fusiliers in the unprotected vessels.
The value of covering smoke was emphasized.
The engineers’ casualties prevented them from destroying obstacles that blocked the landing craft (to some degree) and the tanks and exposed them to destruction, and underlined the need to protect these specialists in the assault wave.
It was obvious that the infantry must have tank protection from the moment of landing and that the anti-tank guns defending the beaches must be destroyed in the preliminary bombardment. Out of this knowledge emerged such specialized vehicles as the Sherman and Churchill “Crabs,” the amphibious Sherman Duplex Drive (DD), the Churchill “AVRE,” the Sherman and Churchill “Bobbins” (Carpet Layers), and the Churchill “Crocodile” (flamethrower-equipped). These were just a small sampling of the sophisticated armored fighting vehicles fielded at Normandy.
Dieppe brought major new organizational concepts for amphibious assaults. The handling of assault landings became a specialized aspect of naval training. The two “dry runs” for Dieppe had obviously been inadequate to iron out all the difficulties that would arise in coordinating such a sizeable force.
There was a lack of knowledge of the German order of battle below the regimental level, knowledge that was important to the assault forces.
There appeared to be overreliance on aerial photography as being capable of revealing all that should be known about the German defenses. This, of course, is one of the classic recurrent failures in intelligence: overreliance on one source or collection system.[30]
[1] Hilary St. George Saunders, Combined Operations: The Official Story of the Commandos. New York: Macmillan and Company, 1943, page 110.
[2] J. M. Clarke, ed., “Dieppe,” Armed Forces Digest, June 1977 (Mississauga, Ontario, Canada), page 7.
[3] Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Captains Without Eyes: Intelligence Failures in World War II. New York: Macmillan and Company, 1969, page 167.
[4] Clarke, op.cit., page 34.
[5] Ibid., page 53.
[6] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., page 187.
[7] Ibid., page 197.
[8] Clarke, op.cit., pages 40-44.
[9] Staff writers, Random Thoughts, International Plastic Modelers Society of Canada, Volume 10 No. 8/9, August/September 1977, page 92.
[10] Honorable Marcell Lambert, Ottawa Interview, February 1977 (Ontario, Canada).
[11] Mr. John Begg, questionnaire prepared in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, May 1977.
[12] Clarke, op.cit., pages 50-53.
[13] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., page 178.
[14] Ibid., pages 179-188.
[15] Ibid., page 171.
[16] Ibid., pages 179-188.
[17] Saunders, op.cit., pages 142-144.
[18] Ibid., pages 144-145.
[19] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., page 193.
[20] Ibid., page 191.
[21] Operations Officer, Corps Headquarters, LXXXI (German) Army Corps, Combat Report and Experiences Gained During the British Attack on Dieppe, 19 August 1942, German After Action Report, dated 25 August 1942.
[22] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., pages 190-193.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Friedrich Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, translated by Ursula R. Moessner. San Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1979, page 6.
[25] Ibid., page 17.
[26] Mr. A. L. Briethaupt, questionnaire prepared in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, May 1977.
[27] Operations Officer, Corps Headquarters, LXXXI (German) Army Corps, Combat Report and Experiences Gained During the British Attack on Dieppe, 19 August 1942, German After Action Report, dated 25 August 1942.
[28] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., page 191.
[29] Ibid., page 192.
[30] Ibid., pages 194-196.
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